


We Are Dragons

by iia_ao3ac



Series: We are dragons [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Bloodraven POV, Bronn - Freeform, Dragon restoration, F/M, Jon/Daenerys baby, No Mad Queen unless one counts Cersei.1 and Cersei.2, Not for Stark stans, Samwell Tarly - Freeform, Time Travel, canon divergence but based on book canon, tyrion lannister - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-08 06:34:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21795943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iia_ao3ac/pseuds/iia_ao3ac
Summary: The story of dragons, human and not, taking what is theirs, with Fire and Blood.This is a time-travel story, continuing from Part I, The Dragons Do NOT forget.This time-travel part is a canon-divergence story, diverging mostly from book canon. Show canon is nonexistent here, in this Part.  Major canon divergence to be expected in all areas, but the story is placed in the ASOIAF universe, mostly following its rules.Even though they don't appear in the Prologue, this is going to be a Jonerys story.  No cheating by either Daenerys, Jon, Bloodraven or Shiera, so do not expect it.If you want to read about a weak or mad Daenerys, this story is definitely not going to be for you. And no, Jon is not going to be troubled by the  aunt/nephew "incest". Incest in Westeros, in the books, is only when the sexual relationship is between siblings or parent/child. And even then siblings relationships are allowed to the Targaryens.
Relationships: Brynden "Bloodraven" Rivers/Shiera Seastar, Jon Snow/Daenerys Targaryen
Series: We are dragons [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1485716
Comments: 79
Kudos: 127





	1. Prologue Part 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WhiteDragonWolf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhiteDragonWolf/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Dragon's Roar](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14172975) by [Priestess_of_Groove](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Priestess_of_Groove/pseuds/Priestess_of_Groove). 

> This is the Prologue, and the time re-start of a time-travel story of Dragon restoration. 
> 
> It is also the end of the Part I, The Dragons do not forgive. 
> 
> The chapter is dedicated to WhiteDragonWolf, aka Ethan Olivares, with many apologies for the huge delay. Real life is not forgiving. Thank you for your lovely comments, and for your service to the Jonerys community with them!
> 
> This chapter is also for all my more bloodthirsty friends, who wanted to see the Tyrion, Sam, Bronn and Bloodraven die. This is it, hope I did it justice.
> 
> Thank you to the most lovely and brilliant MeeMaw who labored to make this much better than it was, and whose suggestions you are going to see in the next chapter. And to another equally lovely and smart friend, greengrassowl, who on top of all other stuff she does here, is the unfortunate one to deal with, and try to fix, my English idiosyncrasies. They both re-wrote quite a bit, especially greengrassowl, who probably had to correct every second phrase, as I am prone to many mistakes. Thank you!!!
> 
> This chapter is Bloodraven's (aka Three Eyed Raven, aka Three Eyed Crow) POV. For the show watchers, his actual name is Brynden Rivers.
> 
> _____________________________________

_____________________

He remembered.

Drogon arrived as he was waiting under the giant oak of the King’s Landing godswood. Shiera stood beside him, a shadow and light. The things she told him, the things she knew, so unbelievable, and yet so mad that he knew now they could be nothing but real. She had hurried, not indulging in details, not explaining her past, nor how she had acquired this knowledge. There was no time left, they both knew that. He hadn’t really believed Shiera then, but that made no difference, because he knew regardless of what happened after, if there was an after, his death was coming and nobody could stop it. He had made his peace with it. He had thought nothing could really hurt him anymore; there was nothing he hadn’t lost already. She had been lost to him, or so he had thought, as had everybody else who ever mattered to him. He had even lost his own body, and with his victory he lost the last thing he had: his purpose that had kept him alive all those years beyond count. He had thought he was above it all, above the human weakness of pain, above feeling anything now that there was nobody worthy to even hate anymore. And yet seeing her again almost shattered him. He knew he wanted to believe her then. But that was just a dream, a dream of hope. And he would not cower behind hope, there was no hope for him, as there had been no hope for any that had stood in his way. He could not begrudge the Last Dragon, he would have done the same, he did do the same—he destroyed all those that had taken from him, and even to the last of their blood. It was his time now. 

  
  


When the huge shadow of Drogon’s wings moved in from the Northwest, a hush descended over the city. The usual hubbub of activity that ebbed and flowed as people went about their daily lives was disrupted as the dragon’s shadow blotted out the meager sun. Silence spread as a fast flowing flood outwards from the line of the Shadow’s flight as it swept above the city. Where once before there had been screams of people scrambling to get away from the dragon above and his flame, everybody knew now there was no hope of escape. Where the darkness fell, only dimly the cry of a child could be heard, or a horse’s stray whinny. And above it all, deafening, the cracking thunder of the Shadow’s wings. The inhabitants of the city still in rubble stood frozen, with their eyes on the sky tracking the progress of the darkness, waiting for their doom in silence. There was nowhere to run, and no Gods to cry to.

But this time, Drogon flew past the destroyed Dragon Gate, past the Dragonpit and Fleabottom, directly to Aegon’s Hill. To the Red Keep. Much of it was gone, half destroyed from before, only Maegor’s Holdfast stood almost untouched amidst the ruined towers. The dragon did not slow his flight but descended at speed, blasting the fortress in fire, and then with a powerful sweep of his wings he wheeled around it, gained more height and descended again, unleashing a monstrous blaze. The guards on this side of the drawbridge were instantly combusted, the cloaks that they wore two dots of white that lasted less than a moment before all was flames, their bodies slammed by the shock of the fire jet backwards. The dragon started rising again to the sky, his wing beats causing a whirlwind of dancing flares.

It was at that moment that a bolt flew from the wall behind the ruined White Sword Tower, hitting the dragon’s glittering scales with a high screeching sound before falling uselessly to the ground. The wooden part of the shaft caught fire from just the proximity of the extreme heat emanating from Drogon.

From his ravens vantage point high above, Brynden could see Bronn at one of the few ballistas still remaining on the half-ruined walls around the Red Keep, somehow managing to keep his composure enough to try to reload. He almost respected the sellsword for his bravery, though he knew it was less bravery and more the cold realization that the ballistas left over from the brief reign of the otherwise stupid Lannister Queen were the only remote chance for Bronn himself to get out of this alive. There was nobody else bold enough to try and shoot at the dragon after the last disastrous attempt to stop him. A desperate fool’s hope, as The Shadow seemed to have grown even more immense.

The dragon roared and gained height with a few slow wingbeats and then turned, almost gliding. Then he closed his wide wingspan and plummeted down, speeding towards the huge ballista. Drogon did not bathe the contraption in fire this time, but spread his wings at the last moment and swerved, stretching an enormous claw in midflight, grabbing the man with a jarring impact that likely broke his ribs and spine. Then the dragon, again, started gaining height with thundering beats of his enormous wings until he was high enough he could probably be seen from the entire sprawling city below. Appearing as nothing more than an ordinary cormorant to the small ant-like people far down beneath him, until one realized that no bird could actually be seen from such a distance.

As the Winged Shadow turned against the sun and headed down, he dropped the tiny speck in his claw, and the man that had been Bronn fell faster and faster until he hit the red stone walls below with a sickening splat, and then fell further onto the iron spikes of the dry moat.

Drogon did not alter his downwards flight and blasted Maegor’s tower with fire yet again, then turned and spiraled upwards. Brynden knew that everybody in the tower should have realized by now that there was no escape and no relief--the dragon could keep the fire until the tower crumbled and buried the men inside long after the sheer heat cooked them like so many birds in the oven.

He wondered how the men in the holdfast were going to die. Were they going to hide inside like rats skittering around in panic on a burning ship? Death came for everybody, sooner or later, it is how one faced her that was the true measure of a man.

He knew what Sam Tarly was. He was probably whimpering with his eyes closed as he had done in the Battle of Winterfell, hoping that death would pass him by yet again. How far had he, Bloodraven, fallen, to be associated with such weak disgusting cravens? He had used them, all of these small and petty men, and now they were all that was left of his life. In the end he had become one of them, he was them. Seeing Shierra again only made it clearer and sharper how far they had all fallen, how much less he had become. Yes, he had won. What was life now even worth? He didn’t even have his hate anymore. He had gotten a taste of what that his future would be now. Death was preferable than this life in the body of another, crippled, surrounded by miserable small minded cowards, the empty days stretching ahead forever.

Smoke was coming out of the shattered windows, and Brynden knew the wooden panels on the walls inside the tower had caught fire. There was no way for anybody inside to survive; they would suffocate even before the fire consumed them.

He himself stayed in the Godswood, and had sent everybody away. He wanted to die in the open, see the sky one last time as a man. Shiera had told him he had a choice to make. Perhaps he couldn’t really believe her, because despite everything he had seen and done what she told him was impossible. But no matter his choice, he wanted to die as a man, not as a shrieking rat trapped before he could escape from the oven.

The door to the holdfast opened and smoke billowed outwards as if from a furnace, as Tyrion stumbled out coughing and wheezing. As Brynden saw it, so did Drogon. He shifted his flight path and almost glided down to land with a heavy thud on the thick walls surrounding Maegor’s Holdfast. Despite their massive size, the dragon still looked incongruously huge, as he lowered his head and roared with such a deafening force that the small man in front of him doubled over clamping his hands over his ears.

The sound reverberated everywhere with its menace, and yet, even it meant his death, Brynden had never seen anything so magnificent. Yes, this is who the Red Keep belonged to - the Dragons. They were the ones who built it, and they would bring it back down to the stones that it was made of. Brynden couldn’t help but feel the stirring in his blood, the dragonblood that he had forsworn in his hate for so long. He had achieved his goal, and yet, and yet, when he had set out to do it, so long ago now, the Targaryens had not been dragons anymore. That single focus of hate that had sustained him all the immeasurable years of his life was now gone as his goal had come to pass. And for the first time, he truly understood the call of the dragons, the dream. He could see it in front of him, in the mighty span of Drogon’s wings above the Keep of his ancestors, and the thunderous wind of his wingbeats, he could feel the heat of the Winged Shadow thrumming through his blood. And he wondered. It was the very truth—the dragons were the great glory of his own kind, the true wonder of his blood. They were like nothing else from this world, _death and beauty in one_. Perhaps he had had another path, the path of the true dragon. He could have been _ more _. But he had turned from the chance, not understanding what he turned away. Was there a regret in him? No matter, there was no time for it now. Now was the time for all them to face the end of their chosen paths.

Tyrion straightened his small stature, though for once there was nothing he could say, and it seemed even he realized it. There was a moment where the dragon looked down on the small man in front of him. Then he stretched the vastness of his wings and almost hovered, spanning the short distance over the moat and landing with a tremor onto the yard directly in front of the Maegor’s Tower, knocking Tyrion to the ground with the impact of it.

Before Tyrion could get up, the dragon took two thunderous steps forward and stomped the dwarf into the ground with his clawed foot. The short-lived scream turned into a squelch as Drogon moved forward and unleashed his fire on the tower from close up.

The fire jet and the heat exploded all the remaining glass, as the smoke from the gutted windows turned blacker and thicker. Not even screams could be heard over the roar of the raging inferno. And Drogon did not stop until the stones of the tower themselves almost started glowing with the heat, some of them already cracking and melting. Brynden was sure that by that time everybody inside was long cooked, a few pigs in a red stone oven. The blaze could be felt from even so high above where he was watching, gliding on the air currents stirred by the temperature.

When Drogon lifted from the Maegor’s Holdfast, Brynden knew it was time. His time had come. He would not stay warged in a raven; he wanted to die as man, to look in the eyes of Drogon as a man, even if it was not his own body. He opened his eyes under the heart-tree as the sky above darkened further with the descent of the Shadow.

Two blazes was all it took. The dragon passed twice in the air above and set the Godswood to flame. There was no way out. So that is how he was going to die. He was surrounded by fire, the flares soon licking at his clothes, the heavy woolens resisted the flames, but not for long. His wooden chair ignited, and burned much quicker, leaving him crawling on the ground, suffocating on the heavy black smoke that smelled like burning hair. Or maybe it was his hair that was burning? The pain was not yet blinding, but he couldn’t breathe, the air choking fumes in his lungs, the world spinning around in a dizzying disarray.

He couldn’t see the sky anymore, and yet he could see his long life stretching before him. The moments that meant something flashing in the fiery dance around him. There were so few and most of them blew away in the dark smothering smoke of regret. In the end, he had been measured, against himself, against what he could have been, and he hadn’t measured up. Yes, he had won his _ victory _. And he got the spoils: a life of pettiness, ugly and small, stretching beyond the horizon.

The only light he had once, long ago, the love of Shiera, was gone. Even her shadow was gone now, if he hadn’t imagined it to begin with. In the end, creatures like him died alone.

Once, long ago, there was life, and people he had loved. Shiera, above all, glorious in her otherness, more overwhelming than her otherworldly beauty. Her mind as powerful as his own.

His brother Daeron, the kind brother that he loved, for whom he had willingly sacrificed his life and honor, and would have done it again. People whispered he was Aemon the Dragonknight’s son. Perhaps that was it—he was conceived with love, and love shined through him. He himself was conceived of rape, as was Shiera. That was perhaps why there always was and there would always be darkness flowing through him, to mingle with his bastard blood. That was why it had been so easy to hate—his father, and every Targaryen with him.

The sparks of love had been so few and long ago. The rest was hate. A choking sea of it, devoid of substance in the end, despite all he had achieved through it.

Because in the end of ends, what was the meaning of it all? He had succeeded, yes, in pushing others to the gutter but that hadn’t made him rise, be more. It only made the others less. Small, petty men, and he—one of them. Yes, death was better, he would embrace it like a brother. Drogon could have been a brother, that is who he could have had as family, a dragon’s destiny. And instead, he had become what he despised. A Broken King, and yet a nobody. Nothingness stretching across the horizon. 

He could feel what the dragon felt—contempt, rage, pain. He could recognize himself in Drogon.

These tiny humans had managed to take from him his family, his loved ones. His love was as enormous as his grief. He could feel it as a blast of heat in his own mind. Brothers, they were brothers. He was so small in comparison. And yet, the pain was all around, it rolled over him and drowned him. Yes, death, it was an escape. The pain just the path there. He wanted it, he would let it consume him, he would embrace it as a long lost friend, a friend from old, one he always knew he would see again. He didn’t have anybody left, except death. And he welcomed its embrace, at long last.

The pain consumed him. _ Yes, thank you, brother, I would even take the pain. _

It was better than regret. It tied him to Drogon, they were brothers now in pain. Alone. 

In the end, everybody died alone.

____________________________

So, he remembered. He remembered the long strange years of his own past life, and he remembered his own death. The memory of the fire, the pain was so real, a thousand times worse than the knife twisting to take his eye, it was dizzying, dissipating in excruciating waves.

It was not a dream. He remembered as clearly as he remembered anything from his Night’s Watch life now. The cold was a sharp contrast to the conflagration in his memory, and made him brace his whole body against the biting wind. The whisper of the Old Gods, rustled through the red leaves of the weirwood trees he was surrounded by. Did he know the Gods, even after serving them for what was surely a few mortal lifetimes?

He stood on his own two feet, the long black cloak heavy on his shoulders. He took his glove off and looked at his hand, the veins standing out, his long pale fingers the ones he was used to seeing before he took over the boy. He flexed his hand into a fist, the joints stiff from the cold. His vision skewed the same way it always did after his half-brother Aegor took his eye out on the Redgrass Field.

He remembered so much more than his own life though. Moments from the lives of so many others as he had seen them through his greensight, he remembered those as well. He also knew what day this was. This was the day he had decided to leave the Night’s Watch and take on the visions that would lead him to become the last greenseer. The memories were not the only thing that had flooded back. His rage was there too, his hate was not gone, and it never would be, it was part of him. The question really was if there was anything else left for him but hate.

And now a similar decision was before him, a fork in the road. He could stay and change events in Westeros, take his victory and bring the Targaryens down much sooner than before. And then what?

“_ It is not over yet. It will never be over. Don’t you know that by now, my long lost love? The Gods will bring you back into your tree and keep you there for millennia, until they get what they want. They will do it again and again, if they have to. _ “

This was what Shiera had said. He hadn’t quite believed what she told him. About Gods and their wars and truces, and about an agreement to bring time back. That had seemed impossible, mad, the ravings of a lunatic. Yet he had seen her in front of him before his death, shadow and light, eternal. Perhaps he was the one that had gone mad—that thought had been lodged somewhere in his mind. Still, he hadn’t really cared. Even as a shadow she was still more vibrant than the world around him. He craved her presence as vividly as a breath of cold air when he was suffocating.

And yet the maddest part of what she told him had been true. He had died, and now he stood here again and he had a choice. No meddling in the affairs of Westeros until the dragons were born again. The dragons had to be protected at all costs, Shiera had said. For this the Gods were prepared to spare his body from being chained to a tree, to give him the longevity of their own servants. He believed her now. Because how otherwise could she know what even he, the last greenseer, hadn’t?

Let go of his hate and protect those who he had personally helped destroy before. Could he do it? No, that was not the real question. The question was what would his life be worth if he didn’t. Even if he could escape the fate of his previous path, and he won again in his revenge, what would his victory be worth? He knew now he could do what his hate demanded, as he had done it before. And in the end, on the scale of time he had measured as little more than the small men he had crushed or used in his path of vengeance and destruction. What had his victory truly been worth then? He had gutted his dragonblood kin, only to realize that by vanquishing them he lost the only ones that could have been his brothers--the true dragons. All that were left in the end were the miserable cowards and fools with delusions of grandeur surrounding him. And worse, he was the one that had propped them to the positions they did nothing to deserve. All that was left for him was to become one of _ them, _not seeing further than the end of a day, rats scurrying around living their petty lives. No, he would not be that, never. He would be more, he would measure himself against the true dragons, the ones who moved the course of history forward. He would turn the tide of the ages if he had to, or he would die trying. Because he was Bloodraven, and he would be that again.

He had a ship to catch at Hardhome.


	2. The Light, The Sword and The Death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A semi-epilogue, big time-skip from the Prologue. This chapter takes place after the Dragons have taken King's Landing, but before the Great War with the Others. 
> 
> Gendry's POV on the changes happening in King's Landing and the Kingdoms, now that the Dragons rule once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a semi-epilogue, as the summary says. I have planned a lot of scenes and events that take place before it, and also after it. 
> 
> It may be strange, my writing and posting out of order, but I have reasons. I have planned a long multi-chapter story, but though I hope for it, it is unclear if I will be able to finish all that I have planned. For two reasons: as some of you know my health is not exactly predictable. I feel surprisingly well, but I still have stage 4 cancer. Also, I write very slowly because I am not a natural writer, and certainly not in the caliber of some other writers on here. Also, now that I am better, my real-life work is substantial and takes a lot of time. This is the reason then that I wanted to write this semi-epilogue, even if it is out of order time-wise: I want to lay these ideas of what could have happened with the Dragons ruling Westeros. What Dany could have done, with the help of Bloodraven, who I envision as Robespierre (the "reign of terror" French revolution leader). They could have truly changed Westeros, started something new, better. But instead, we got King Bran, and the talk about brothels. Well, they are addressed here too. 
> 
> But also, the other reason is, I am hoping better writers than me can take up these ideas and write what I won't be able to. 
> 
> Also, as always, thank you to the most lovely and brilliant MeeMaw and greengrassowl, who both labored to make this much better than it was, and whose suggestions you are going to see in the next chapters. 
> 
> Everything related to the baby-princess here, now and forever, is dedicated to MeeMaw, I wrote it for her. 
> 
> Final note, Gendry here is NOT the show Gendry, it is more book-based Gendry. But, remember, canon is pretty much non-existent here. The universe is, canon is not. 
> 
> This said, enjoy! Many of the questions you have I hope will be answered in future chapters.

The Light, The Sword and The Death. 

Gendry was preparing to go to the meeting at the Red Keep that he hoped would finally answer his many questions as to what this whole _ Council _ business was about. In the last few weeks, after the Red Keep had changed hands and the three-headed dragon banners were flying once more over it, as were the three dragons themselves, every few days he had been going there for _ preparations_, which all seemed just _ talking _ to him. After the wars, when she learned who he was, Queen Daenerys had offered him a lordship in the Stormlands, to be a sworn bannerman to Shireen Baratheon. She had also offered to legitimize him as a Baratheon, but he had refused. He was no lord, and he didn’t want any part of his blood-father’s legacy except what he already had—his strength in yielding a hammer. 

Gendry couldn’t imagine himself anywhere else but here—in his shop, a Master blacksmith. His old Master, Tobho Mott, had left it to him upon his death, Gendry had learned when he came back to King’s Landing after the wars. He had taught him everything he knew, he had protected him, and he had died by the hands of the Goldcloaks sent by Queen Cersei rather than give him up. Master Tobho was his father in all the ways that mattered. 

Gendry wished, not for the first time, that the man was alive to see the changes that were happening. Master Tobho was one of the few who could re-work Valyrian steel. How eager would he have been to try and forge new one, now that dragons lived again. It was left to Gendry to try and work it, with the help of a maester, Marwyn the Mage as some of his fellow _ Council _ members called him, not that the strange Maester seemed to mind. Gendry was not afraid of him, though the man was haughty and belligerent. He tended to yell at him and sundry others how they were all idiots and he was amazed that they could even feed themselves without drooling, let alone put two thoughts together. Gendry would have never guessed the first time he saw Marwyn the Mage that the brawler in front of him was a Maester—he looked like a Flea Bottom fighter who made some coin fighting on street corners for the betting of the crowd. 

No, Maester Marwyn the Mage, strange as he was, didn’t rattle Gendry. His occasional bouts of swearing even amused him. And he was smart. The things he knew about Valyrian steel would make even Master Tobho listen. What _ did _ make Gendry’s hair stand on edge though was the occasional presence of the Third Head in his shop. The man never raised his voice, he was very knowledgeable and exceedingly quick to learn. He never looked at him with scorn, but something in him made Gendry’s insides freeze. Perhaps it was his knowledge of the dragon magic that did it, but it was more-- the man seemed to radiate magic himself. 

Gendry had known him from the _ preparation _ meetings of course, and most all of King’s Landing had seen him ride the cream-and-gold dragon. His name was Brynden Rivers, as was told, and it must be said the name of the great sorcerer of old from the scary songs suited the gaunt man. Perhaps it was the Bloodraven himself come again, many whispered. _ The Third Head _ was what people named him when they talked about him in the open, _ The Death_, many called him behind his back. 

It seemed most everybody whoever stood in the presence of the Third Head was afraid of him, and few were ever brave enough to bandy words with him. Maester Marwyn, and some other of the Maesters on the meetings that he had seen, perhaps. But what the tongues lacked in wagging in his presence, they more than made up for behind his back. Whenever Gendry was drinking some ale in the kitchens, sooner or later some tale about The Death would be told by one of the maids or the cooks, or the steward folks. 

  
  
  
  


_ The Light_, _ The Sword _ and _ The Death_, that was what the servant folks had taken to calling the Three Heads. Gendry soon noticed that the nicknames had started spreading beyond the Red Keep, to the city itself. He himself had started calling them that in his thoughts, though he had to be careful and not let it slip in the Council preparation meetings. 

_ The Council _ was one of the many new things the Three Heads had introduced, and many, including Gendry himself, were not at all clear what exactly it meant or its purpose. To create _ laws_, The Light had said. It was still confusing to him what their parts in it were to be, of the many people gathered there in the Tower of the Hand. Or what even the Three Heads were? Queen Daenerys said that name, but it was unclear to Gendry what it _ meant_. Were they meant to be a King and a Queen, and their Hand? It seemed so to most, at first. But then, they behaved as equal, and not as royals and their Hand, none of them seemed above the others. It did not make sense to Gendry, yet.

Most anybody in the streets of King’s Landing addressed them as Queen Daenerys and King Jon. Few ever really met the Third Head from up close to call him anything. But the smallfolk saw the Queen often enough, and the small children especially flocked to her whenever she went through the streets of King’s Landing. Gendry thought he knew why her nickname was _ The Light_, as much of course as reason had anything to do with nicknames, after all Arya had called him “Mutton Chops” once. Of course, her Targaryen hair perhaps had to do with it too, but it was more than that. Queen Daenerys, she was the light in the glum for many a life. The children especially, so many of them orphans, most had never had a steady roof above their heads or a sure meal to look forward to until she came. Many of the mothers too looked on her as the only hope for their babes to escape the misery they themselves had grown up with. Nobody had even shown an ounce of care before for the countless women that had nothing to look forward to but to watch helplessly as their bastard children went hungry and if the girls ever grew up they soon had to care for bastard children of their own. 

Gendry knew now he himself had been lucky, both because as the bastard child of King Robert his apprenticeship had been paid for, and that Master Tobho had come to love him as a son. But even most of King Robert’s bastards were not so lucky—Queen Cersei had seen to that. None of their mothers had had any say as to what happened to them, and few if any of them had ever had any hope before that either they or their children would escape their fate. Because they were lowborn, and any bloody highborn could do as they wished with any of them. Because none of them had mattered before, unless to be playthings for those that had been lucky to be born on the right side of fate.

While not that much had changed yet, there was a beginning of hope for many of these women. One of the new things Queen Daenerys had commanded upon taking King’s Landing was the founding of the _ Sanctuaries_. Gendry had never heard of anything the like before. It was proclaimed on the squares that holdfasts would be set aside or built, throughout Westeros, where any woman who wished to appeal for help from the crown would have protection. Nobody would be allowed to touch them there, they will have food and help for their children until they would be able to stand on their own two feet. 

When the first Sanctuary was declared in Flea Bottom it had been a great oddity, the three-headed dragon of the Targaryen sigil waving on a high pole above it. While its new high walls were erected by the eunuch soldiers, small groups of gawkers had mulled about, gossiping about its purpose and murmuring about the efficiency of the foreigners. 

Flea Bottom had a few orphanages from before, and in one of the first _ preparation _ meetings Queen Daenerys had asked him many questions about them, how they were run, were the children taken care of, what did Gendry think could be done. She had _ thanked _ him for taking care of the orphans with the Brotherhood and had called him _ cousin_. Gendry still couldn’t quite believe he had heard that right. He, a lowborn bastard, a _ cousin _ to a Queen, and she had not been ashamed to call him that. Since that day he had started thinking more about the orphanages, and what could be done for those children. He had some ideas for the boys, but he wanted to mull over them more. Maybe he could take one of the stronger boys as an apprentice, or just to help in his shop? He needed to think more on it. But the girls, his heart ached when he thought about the little girls. There was nothing he could do to help there, and he tried to put their fates out of his mind. He remembered little Arry, Arya Stark, as he had learned she was. She had survived because she had pretended to be a boy, and they had stuck together. He wondered not for the first time what had become of her. Her half-brother, King Jon Snow, The Sword, was sometimes present in the meetings at the Red Keep, though Gendry was afraid to approach him, he was a King after all, and a lowborn like him didn’t just approach Kings. 

For a while, the_ Sanctuary _ had stayed empty, the guards at the door seemingly the only inhabitants. This had changed when a whore from one of the brothels had taken residence there. For a day or two nothing happened, except for the gossip spreading like fire blown by the wind. Gendry himself discarded the wilder tales, but from what he had been able to understand the woman had gone there out of desperation, and what the rumors told was she had barely been able to drag herself there, blood oozing from a slash knife wound from her chest to her arm, her face battered and her mouth split badly. Perhaps an unruly client had done that, perhaps the owner of the brothel himself. It was a sight so common in Flea Bottom nobody really bothered to ask until now. 

All kinds of people had taken to inconspicuously stopping by at the shops round about while throwing covert glances at the Sanctuary. Even Gendry’s own shop was getting more people walking in to look, as it was close enough to the house. It had started to annoy him though because he had to stop his work to greet them and they didn’t want nor armor not weapons, they just gawked. Anyway nothing whatsoever happened for a while—there were only the two Unsullied guards at the doors at all times, and the walls were high enough so that nothing could be seen inside. Nevertheless, the many urchins on the streets seemed to have taken to keeping a constant watch on the goings on or lack of such.

It was no wonder then that as soon as the commotion started, a small crowd assembled to watch the proceedings unfold, a free theater for the onlookers. A weaselly looking man, richly dressed in a dark green cloak and flanked by two cut-throats almost as large as Gendry himself had come to demand the woman back. Two more street brutes followed him. Gendry did not recognize him, but he guessed he was the owner of the brothel the whore had escaped from. The weasel seemed a bit apprehensive at first, but then he realized the crowd was watching him and he put on a brave face and declared that the woman was his and he wanted her back, nobody had no right to keep her except him.

The eunuch standing on the left side of the door did not move at all. He stood in his dark uniform as if he were carved from a piece of wood. The man on the right though turned his head, just his head mind, looked at the weasel and said in a heavily accented voice:

“No slave in Westeros. Woman chose to stay. You go, no trouble.”

That seemed to incense the brothel owner, but he held forth still. 

“I paid good money for her, slave or no. I gave her a roof over her head when I should have turned her back to the gutter where she came from. She owes me money for losing me a client. She is just a whore, her place is to take it and shut up, not run away like some maid. What are you gonna do with her? The only thing she can do is fuck. She belongs to my establishment, if you want to enjoy her services, you have to pay me, she is mine. You can’t keep her here forever, what do you need her for anyway? “

The eunuch on the right just repeated, unaffected:

“No slave in Westeros. Woman chose to stay. You go, no trouble.”

The owner didn’t attempt to bandy any more words with the foreign soldiers, just nodded to the thugs he brought with him. They walked closer, dwarfing the two guards at the door. 

For a while, nothing happened and the crowd seemed to wait with bated breath. Each of the onlookers realizing just like Gendry that they were watching something new, something that they didn’t know what to think of yet. The woman _ was _ just a whore. Maybe she had chosen to be a whore, maybe she hadn’t. For many of the women in Flea Bottom there was nothing else anyway, but at least this way they made enough to eat and even some coin. Some of the whores were treated well even, some even had seemed happy. Or did they just look happy to lure clients? Some of the pretty ones could make a lot of money in the richer whorehouses on the Street of Silk. What happened to the not so pretty ones when they got old? What happened to the ones that their owner sold to men who liked to beat them, or bash their teeth out, or carve them even? Gendry didn’t want to even know for sure, he could guess. But what he and the crowd of gawkers had just started to realize was that the Queen’s soldiers were standing there _ protecting a whore_. 

The stillness was broken as one of the two cutthroats made to push the eunuch on the left away from the door with his hand. The foreigner then moved with a speed Gendry had not seen in his life. He had watched many a man spar, or fight, or just straight kill each other. Before the gathered crowd could do more than gasp the two closest hirelings were lying on the ground, stunned it seemed to unconsciousness, the arm of the one that reached for the door guard twisted at an unnatural angle. 

The silence that descended was unnatural. The assembled onlookers who would normally cheer loudly on the fight, call insults, or place bets, watched transfixed. 

The two remaining hirelings were hesitant, but then their pride and reputation were now on the line. They couldn’t be seen to show fear of the two smaller dark-skinned foreign men, who were not even men. Gendry could see the one closer to him grasp his dirk belted behind his back, clearly considering the best angle of attack. He seemed to be the more experienced and cool-headed one, as the other had already taken his dirk out, and in a show of bravado was tossing it from his right hand to his left to amuse the crowd. 

It was strange to listen to the silence. Normally the showmanship of the cutthroat with his knife would have bought him some whistles and cheers, but the crowd watched silently, unsure what was happening. The brothel owner himself seemed stunned, but he had stepped out of the way and watched now with the others. The two guards had not even taken a fighting stance, they just moved a little closer to each other. 

It seemed the thug on the left was out of patience. As he feigned an attack on the right guard to turn at the last moment to the left, hefting the knife from his left to his right hand at the last moment and trying to gut the foreigner in the liver. The feint didn’t help him though. The lithe dark-skinner sidestepped with an unnatural smoothness and with a sharp motion of his small shield hit the man on his forearm, forcing him to drop the knife. Then with a fluid motion, he brought the staff of his spear to the side of the head of the other attacker, who had attempted to flank the other guard. His dark-skinned brother in arms left his own attacker to his comrade, and instead with the same fluidity cracked the showman who had bent to pick his knife with his left, the right hanging numb already. 

The two larger men fell, the sounds of them hitting the ground loud in the continuing silence. The guards stepped back and resumed their places guarding the door, the bodies of the four men strewn around them. 

The crowd continued watching in fascination, glancing between the foreigners and the stunned brothel owner. He took a couple of steps back, but hit the circle of onlookers, and so he turned and elbowed his way out, leaving his hirelings to fend for themselves. They seemed to be alive, as one of them soon enough groaned and moved, rolling on his side and to his knees. There was murmur of speculation now among the crowd, wondering what the dark-skinners would do. The foreigners at the door didn’t move, they seemed to only react when they were attacked. Soon the other thugs started stirring, gathering themselves. Judging by their scars, they had been in enough fights to know when a battle was lost. So they just left, the two knifers no doubt regretting they had to leave their valuable weapons on the ground. But neither of them it seemed dared to step closer and collect their dirks. 

The crowd of onlookers did not disperse till much later, and even then about a dozen urchins still hung out, more than the usual number, talking excitedly amongst themselves while watching the change of guard at the door. 

What had happened that day was the tale in all the shops and all the streets. Most just wondered at the skill of the foreign soldiers, and what should be expected to happen now. But Gendry knew there was more to it. The foreigners had defended a whore. She was just some whore who had taken shelter at that house, the _ Sanctuary_, and they defended her against her brothel owner. It had turned out it was not such a risk to them, but they hadn’t known that at the start. They had risked being injured or worse, death, to protect a _ whore_!

Gendry had heard in the next days some say that the foreigners had no right to meddle. That the brothel owner had the right of it, he had invested money in his whore, and she couldn’t just run away like that. That she owed the man. But most people kept quiet and said nothing when they heard this. And one thing Gendry knew: that day had changed things forever. 

Soon the Sanctuary started filling up with women, some with their children, some young, some old. Most of the women seemed to come early before dawn, or even in the dead of night. But Gendry had seen one of them walk in, a young woman, a girl really, small and very skinny, with her head bowed so low he couldn’t see her face, she stood in front of the door quietly. The guards opened the door for her and stood aside, letting her go in. 

Gendry wondered what was to become of those women Would they be forever living inside the Sanctuaries? But then when he went to the Red Keep for one of the meetings, he had heard it with his own ears from one of the cooks that one of the new women who worked in the kitchens now had come from one of the Sanctuaries. He had to mull that one over, while he beat the metal in his forge. It seemed whatever the Queen had planned, it did not end with The Light placing those women behind a wall. It seemed she was giving them a chance—a chance at protection, a chance at a new life. 

Would that last? As long as the Light had dragons and armies, it was hard to stand against the Queen’s will. If she ordered Sanctuaries, then Sanctuaries there would be. The orphanages would be taken care of and food sent. The folk who never had anybody to protect them had a chance, a hope, even if only a small one. But would the Light be Queen forever? What would become of all those changes if she was not here to muscle them through with her soldiers? What if something would happen to her, or to the other Heads? They wouldn’t be alive forever, and the Great War was coming. The Three Heads and their dragons would be the ones fighting in the front, the Queen too, and nobody was safe from dying. 

Gendry knew that the Queen had a babe, a daughter, with the strange name _ Rhaeqēlos_, if one of the maids, Karry, was to be believed. She said that meant “ray from a star” in Valyrian, though what would a maid know of Valyrian was beyond him, but then Karry traded in gossip like a fishmonger in fish. The little babe was a subject of much delight in the kitchens, and any stories about her that filtered there were eaten up like hot honey cakes out of the oven on a cold day. One or two of the maids had even seen glimpses of the babe when they were about some business in the Queen’s quarters (made up some business, more like, to see her), and they all said they had never beheld a more beautiful babe in their lives. Gendry just sat there drinking his ale and smirking to himself. If one listened to women, every babe was the most beautiful babe they had ever seen, and the ones Gendry had seen had all looked weird and, well, babe-like. What he did believe though was that the little girl had the strangest of eyes, because they all said the same thing: that one of the girl’s eyes was dark grey, and the other was lilac. Gendry had never heard of anybody with such eyes. He wondered to himself how then the women all said the babe was so very beautiful, but he knew better than to ask that aloud, unless he wanted to be thrown out of the kitchens in disgrace for insulting the little princess. Ha.

Whatever the truth was of whether the little strange-eyed girl was the most beautiful babe of all or not, she seemed to hold the hearts of the serving womenfolk with endless fascination. Many of the maids even sought to befriend the foreign handmaids of the Queen in order to gain more information on the comings and goings of the Queen and her daughter. The maid Karry was friends with one of the Queen’s Dothraki handmaidens, Irri, and so her words were always met with a gaping wonder, especially by the younger kitchen wenches and the older women cooks. Gendry was there once when she was telling a fat tale of how when the babe was born and The Death was let in the room to see it for the first time, the Dothraki maid said she saw tears in The Death’s eye. Gendry had snorted then, because that tale was preposterous. Firstly, why would the Death cry for a child not his own, the man was not some maid cooing at babes. Second, how would they even see any tears? Did the Dothraki maid shove her face into his one eye, or was the man bawling there for all to see? Karry got offended though and told him that she didn’t know why the man had teared up, but that she asked that herself and that Irri swore she saw it when she reached to take the babe off his hands. Then Karry said that if they thought she lied, she won’t bother them with her stories anymore, at which point all the womenfolk glared at him and he had to apologize. One of the crones who had stopped kneading the dough to listen ventured a guess that perhaps the man took to the babe as a grandfather would, maybe the Queen was like a daughter to him, and everybody knew that people softened when they had grandchildren.

Whatever the truth of that tale was, grandfatherly or not, one thing was for sure—nobody really knew who the babe’s father was. That too was the subject of much speculation among the kitchen folk, naturally. The Light was not married, at least not now, it was clear to Gendry. And the maids would know if she had a man or not. She had been married to a Dothraki warlord, but he had died when her dragons were born. Gendry at first had thought that the Sword was the Queen’s husband, cause everybody called him King Jon, but he didn’t think so anymore. And much that the Queen was free with her words when she talked to him, they talked about general stuff, orphanages and the like. Gendry couldn’t just ask her if she had a husband. Perhaps the little princess was a bastard, like himself. But then, who was the heir? Who ruled? 

  
  


Never before had Gendry been concerned with who sat on the Iron Throne. He had now seen it once, from afar, a great monstrosity of a chair. But who sat on it had never been Gendry’s business. Even after he learned he was King Robert’s son, he hadn’t cared. He was still a lowborn bastard, only deserving of scorn in the eyes of the trueborn lords. For the likes of him, who sat the Iron Throne did not make much of a difference. The ones who ruled were all the same, Gendry had thought then. But now he knew that was not true. Now that he had seen what was possible, he knew it mattered. For the first time in his life Gendry wished he had a say. Not for himself, but for the people he had begun to believe he could help, that somebody could help. Perhaps he had changed himself, but a grand change was in the air, and for once, Gendry believed it would be a change for the better. Maybe he was deluding himself, maybe it was all wishful thinking, but he knew he had waded too far now to turn back. 

The first _ Council _ meeting was held in the Queen’s ballroom, a room Gendry had been in now a few times. Most of the lords still looked at him as if they were unsure what such a lowborn scum as he was doing there, a bastard at that. But there were several people he got along well enough, many of them lowborn like him. Ser Davos the Onion knight was one of them, a Flea Bottom born like him, who had been knighted by King Robert’s brother Stannis. And even some of the highborns were not so bad, the little lady Shireen Baratheon was friendly enough to him.

When Queen Daenerys entered the room, flanked by the Death and her exotic looking adviser, Missandei, a former slave, as Gendry knew, there was a shush that descended among the many tables seating the various members of the Council. Most were grouped each with their own, though six of the maesters were clustered together with the High Septon, while Marwyn the Mage had seated himself on the side of a half-empty table where it seemed nobody wanted to join him. Gendry wouldn’t have minded, but the other lowborns from King’s Landing were still afraid of the strange maester. Though it seemed that Missandei was not, as she smiled at the man unconcerned and sat right next to him, while The Death took a place one chair across from The Sword, leaving a spot for the Light. 

The Queen did not sit, but instead stood straight, as tall as her small stature allowed and said, her voice carrying in the mirrored room: 

“All of you have wondered why we are here. We are here to change the course of history. We are here to start something new, something better.”

“When my ancestor, Aegon the Conqueror, was crowned by his sister-wife Rhaenys, it was as King of All Westeros, Shield of His People. For too long the first title has overshadowed the second. Protectors of the Realm—is that not what the Kings and Queens are supposed to be? “

“What is the Realm? Is it the high Lords? The lowborns? The Kings and Queens? I say the people are the Realm. All the people. The highborns and the lowborns, the trueborns as well as the bastards. All deserve life. All deserve to be protected. ”

The Light paused then, for a moment, all eyes on her. 

“Lord Protector of the Realm. That has been the King’s title since the three dragons of House Targaryen conquered the six Kingdoms. But Aegon did not protect the Realm on his own. Three Dragons conquered the Kingdoms, Three Dragons should have ruled them. Forever. And yet my ancestors lost their ways. They bent to the rules of others, where they should have bent the rules of others to them.”

“Valyria was not a Kingdom, there was not one King, or Queen, who ruled all from high above. The Valyrian Freehold, it was called. My ancestors were the blood of Old Valyria, the blood of the Dragon. But they betrayed their own blood. And so they became smaller and smaller, until they were true dragons no longer. They chained their winged blood, and they killed their human kin. “

“This is what we mean to change, here and now. Now that the dragons live again we have a new chance. A chance to change history again. “

“No longer will a _ single _ person hold all the power of life and death in their hands. _ The Dragon has Three Heads. _ There will be no King and no Queen anymore, but Three Heads. Three people will share the burden to protect the realms. “

The Light glanced at The Death and continued. 

“And they will be the subject of the _ law_. No one person will be above it. No man, no woman, no lord and no lowborn, no trueborn and no bastard. Not even the Three Heads. The law must be the same for all, whether it protects or punishes. All people should be equal in its eyes. “

“This is the purpose of this Council. If the law is to be equal for all, then all should have a say. If the rulers are to protect all people, then the people should have a say on who their rulers are. This Council, and the ones after, will speak for the people. Three years from now, the people will be allowed to choose their councilmen, and then the Council will make a choice on behalf of the people. The Council will select the Three Heads. Whoever the Council selects, be they lowborn, or highborn, trueborn or bastard, men or women, they will rule the Kingdoms for seven years. Then the choice will be made again, and so it will be in perpetuity.“

The Light finished her words in dead silence. But it didn’t last long...

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!!!
> 
> Next two chapters are going to be: 1) the continuation of this first Council meeting and the screams of the greedy lords and religious zealots (a continuation of this epilogue).
> 
> And 2) Bloodraven meeting Shiera on the ship from Westeros, a continuation of the Prologue.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> I know I am an annoyingly slow writer, but in my defense my real life is not exactly conducive to writing.
> 
> Also, on a more specific note, I tried, I really tried to have Sam be eaten. But, he is exactly the type of coward who will hide inside and think he would escape death this way, cause Maegor is a fortress. Also, Drogon might have gotten indigestion if he ate that overgrown rat.


End file.
